Five things we learned from the Prince show Tuesday night

Prince and his band 3rd Eye Girl perform at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver, Canada.

Prince and his band 3rd Eye Girl perform at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver, Canada. (Kevin Mazur / WireImage)

Mikael Wood

Early Tuesday night, Prince played the first of four shows at the City National Grove of Anaheim, part of the Purple One's so-called Live Out Loud tour with his new backing band, 3rd Eye Girl. Pop & Hiss will publish a full review later, but for now, here are five quick takeaways.

1. Age hasn't caused Prince, 54, to relax his famous no-photos rule. Security heavies prowled the venue Tuesday night, seemingly eager to kick out fans firing off shots with their cellphones. And the legend even skipped having an official photographer at the show -- the image you see at the top of this post was taken at the tour's first stop in Vancouver, Canada.

2. The no-photos rule was a bummer, because Prince put some extremely trippy visuals on the giant video screen behind him onstage. At one point he also had two stagehands bring out what looked like a pair of aromatherapy candles -- very Restoration Hardware.

3. Tony Kanal of No Doubt was there.

4. Prince radically reworked some of his best-known songs Tuesday, including "Let's Go Crazy" and "Little Red Corvette." But he kept "Purple Rain" virtually unchanged. Dude knows what not to mess with.

5. For Prince it is not enough that you love rock 'n' roll -- he insists that "you love your rock 'n' roll funky," as he put it before he played "Screwdriver." Seems reasonable to us.